CCHQ’s coffers have not been in the greatest of shapes since many of their big donors went dry in frustration at the party’s failure to deliver Brexit. The fact that the annual budget has ballooned from around £8 million per year to nearer £20 million per year hasn’t helped, largely due to vast staff increases as part of the Campaign Manager programme. It got so bad that Treasurer Mick Davis had to dip into his own pockets to fund the EU election campaign…

It’s fair to say that there aren’t that many big Boris fans in CCHQ, even so it’s now reached the stage where they’re so desperate for cash that they’re even joking that it #CantBeHunt if the party’s finances are to recover. As a member of the Treasurer’s department put it to one of Boris’s team earlier:

“While it’s clear Press and CRD hate Boris – the truth is the Party needs him. With the financial state the Party is in we need ‘Box Office Boris’, not a ‘straight to DVD also-ran’.”

Backing Boris to bring the big bucks back…

UPDATE: A CCHQ spokesman gets in touch to say: “CCHQ has been and continues to be strictly neutral in this contest.”